On "stomaching" the Bible
There are a handful of topics and themes that I can fairly reliably count on to cause questions or concerns in the life of the church. Near the top of the list would be questions about the Bible. What about all of the problem texts of violence and misogyny? What about the history of canonization—which books got in, which were left out, and why? Which parts are “historical” and which are “symbolic” or “metaphorical?” What about all of those long, boring, irrelevant lists of sacrificial rituals and antiquated, bewildering legal codes? Why, in short, do we have such a messy, complicated, difficult book to deal with instead of a book that conforms to our expectations of what an “inspired” text ought to look like?
There are many approaches to take to questions like these, but one of the most important places to start, in my view, is to examine our assumptions about the nature of Scripture—about what we expect from the Bible and why. Very often our assumptions about what the Bible ought to be and do fit awkwardly with our professed convictions about the God to whom it points, and this God’s way of being in the world.
This morning, I came across a quote from C.S. Lewis (via Brick by Brick) that expresses this well:
